Faculty of Philosophy English Studies
Harri Salovaara
“Support Your Right to Arm Bears”
Animal Imagery in Gary Snyder’s Poetry
Master’s Thesis Vaasa 2013
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT
1 INTRODUCTION 5
1.1 Research Question and Aims of the Study 6
1.2 Material and Method 7
1.3 Previous Studies 9
2 BUDDHISM AND ECOCRITICISM IN GARY SNYDER’S POETRY 13 2.1 Ideological Background to Gary Snyder’s Poetry 13 2.2 Buddhist Tendencies in Gary Snyder’s Poetry 15 2.3 Ecocritical Tendencies in Gary Snyder’s Poetry 17
3 ANIMAL IMAGERY IN GARY SNYDER’S POETRY 22
3.1 Poems of Interpenetration 24
3.1.1 Interpenetrations of Humans, Animals, and the Earth 25
3.1.2 Hunting Magic, or Animals as People 33
3.2 Poems of Totem Animals 38
3.2.1 The Bear 39
3.2.2 The Coyote 45
3.2.3 The Wolf 48
3.2.4 The Whale 54
3.3 Poems of the Destruction of the Animals’ Natural Habitat 61
3.3.1 People Utilizing Animals 61
3.3.2 A War on Nature and its Effect on Animals 67
4 CONCLUSIONS 72
WORKS CITED 75
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VAASAN YLIOPISTO Faculty of Philosophy
Department: English Studies Author: Harri Salovaara
Master’s Thesis: ”Support Your Right to Arm Bears”
Animal Imagery in Gary Snyder’s Poetry Degree: Master of Arts
Subject: Literature Date: 2013
Supervisor: Tiina Mäntymäki
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ABSTRACT:
Työni tavoitteena on selvittää, miten Gary Snyder käyttää eläinkuvastoa runokokoelmissaan. Lähestyn ongelmaa poikkitieteellisesti käyttäen ekokriittistä näkökulmaa yhdistettynä buddhalaiseen uskonnolliseen teoriaan.
Aineistoni muodostuu Gary Snyderin runotuotannosta. Tämän lisäksi myös Snyderin proosateoksia käsitellään viitekehyksen sitä vaatiessa. Koska buddhalaiset elementit ovat niin vahvasti läsnä Snyderin tuotannossa, olen myös käyttänyt buddhalaista uskontoteoriaa ja klassisia sutra-tekstejä tutkimuksessani, yhdessä ekokritisismiä ja Beat-sukupolvea käsittelevien teosten kanssa.
Varsinaisessa analyysiosassani jaan Gary Snyderin tuotannon eläinaiheiset runot kolmeen luokkaan: interpenetraatiota ilmentävät runot, toteemieläimiä käsittelevät runot ja eläinten elinympäristön tuhoamista käsittelevät runot. Näiden luokittelujen avulla lähestyn tutkimusongelmaani, eli miten eläimet on esitetty Snyderin runotuotannossa ja mikä niiden funktio on. Analyysiosuudessani käytän hyväkseni sekä aiempaa Gary Snyderiin kohdistuvaa kriittistä tutkimusta että ekokriittisiä ja buddhalaisia prinsiippejä.
Työni osoittaa, miten eläimet Gary Snyderin tuotannossa usein ilmentävät ekokriittisiä ja buddhalaisia näkökantoja.
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KEY WORDS: Snyder, Animal, Totem Animals, Ecocriticism, Buddhism, Interpenetration
1 INTRODUCTION
Gary Snyder is first and foremost a poet of the natural world. As such, he is by no means alone, as nature has been one of the lasting elements of poetry since the early Chinese court poetry of the T’ang Dynasty, as well as in the Homeric tradition and all the way through the English Romantics and the American Transcendentalists to the present day. However, few poets have been able, or willing, to write poetry where the author is not merely an observer of nature, but rather an integral part of it, setting themselves on an equal level with all the natural phenomena around them, and giving nature itself a ‘voice’,
render[ing] nature as a speaking subject, not in the romantic mode of rendering an object for the self-constitution of the poet as speaking subject, but as a character within texts with its own existence (Murphy 2000: 196).
Nature is rendered a subject in Snyder’s poetry through the representation of animals.
This representation is what this thesis will examine. Other natural entities are also constantly present in Snyder’s poems, but animals occupy a central role in his work, and it is also through them that he gives nature a voice.
Snyder is associated strongly with Zen Buddhism, and often also with the Deep Ecology movement, an environmental philosophy and facet of ecocriticism, based largely on the Norwegian mountaineer and philosopher Arne Naess’ ideas that share many of the same themes that Snyder has brought to fore in his own work, such as the idea that humans are just “one of the many animal species interdependently living together in ecosystems on earth” (Thornton 1993: 42). This notion resonates well with both Snyder’s Buddhist approach to poetry and with his environmentalist attitudes. This thesis will demonstrate how both Buddhist and ecocritical ideas are expressed through the use of animal imagery in Gary Snyder’s poetry.
1.1 Research Question and Aims of the Study
This study will look at the poetry of Gary Snyder from an ecocritical viewpoint, focusing especially on the representation of animal imagery in his poetry. Furthermore, cultural as well as religious studies are brought in to the study to aid in the understanding of the political and religious implications of Snyder’s poetry.
I will investigate the works of Gary Snyder with the aim of showing how animal imagery is presented in his poetry. Although the animals in the poems are the main objects of study, other natural objects included in the poems are also discussed, as they carry meanings inseparable from the poems. The natural phenomena discussed include non-sentient phenomena such as mountains, forests, rivers, seas and lakes, as well as sentient phenomena represented by such animals as the bear, coyote, deer, whale and various others. The question this study aims to answer is what the role allocated to animals in Snyder’s poems is. The study will show the Buddhist notion of interpenetration as a key component in Snyder’s poetry. This term is directly connected with the way animals are represented in his poetry, and is also an important aspect in modern ecological thinking that sees the world and its ecosystems as interpenetrating entities in a state of constant flux.
Apart from the notion of interpenetration, another potentially challenging term in this study is nature, for which one is hard pressed to find a logical and all-encompassing definition. In a sense, of course, everything is nature/natural, cities and nuclear plants as well as trees and chipmunks, as it is ontologically impossible to define anything as
‘unnatural’. The idea of ‘nature’ has been repudiated by various literary schools, from formalist to deconstructionist, with declarations like “there is no such thing as nature”, the ideas of the ‘sign’ and ‘text’ often by their sheer dominance in literary and cultural studies robbing something away from the reality of the natural world that humans perceive through their senses (Coupe 2000: 2). In this study I will use Laurence Coupe’s definition of nature as a “collective name for ‘individual plants, nonhuman animals, and elements’” (2000: 3).
1.2 Material and Method
Gary Snyder has published numerous works of both poetry and prose, but this study will concern itself primarily with Snyder’s poetry. Poems spanning Snyder’s whole career will be dealt with. Quantitatively speaking, the volume that has received the most attention in this study is Turtle Island which was published in 1974 and earned Snyder the Pulitzer Prize for poetry.
Turtle Island is perhaps Snyder’s best known work, and is an important volume in that it stands on the watershed of Snyder’s production, being written after his return to America after a twelve-year sojourn in Japan, and being in many ways a culmination point in regard to his ecological vision. Turtle Island makes for a good object of study also in that it has aroused such mixed reviews, many commentators criticizing the explicit political implications that the volume carries with it. Robert Kern, for example, sees the “didacticism” (1991: 116) of Turtle Island as a burden, compromising the poetic value of the work. However, this very politicization of animals and nature makes the collection a very appropriate object for this study.
Turtle Island contains fifty-eight poems altogether. Of these, thirty-five include animal imagery, and of these thirty-five I have chosen eleven to be dealt with in this thesis.
These eleven poems are all printed whole in this thesis to show how the animal imagery relates to the other themes in the poems. Turtle Island is divided into four sections, three of poetry and one of prose. The poetry sections are called “Manzanita”, “Magpie’s Song” and “For the Children”, and the accompanying prose section is called “Plain Talk”. The prose section contains most of the same themes dealt with in the preceding poems, but is not further investigated in this study, as my objective is to look at the poetic imagery that Snyder uses.
Apart from the eleven poems dealt with from Turtle Island, I will also look at some of Snyder’s other poems when necessary. Of Snyder’s other work, his earliest volumes of poetry, Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems (1959), and Myths and Texts (1960), provide insights into the beginnings of Snyder’s career in poetry. These poems were written
prior to his immersion in Zen training and do not yet show as clearly the Buddhist notion of interpenetration that is so characteristic of his later poetry. Furthermore, explicit environmental politics are not yet present to the extent that they are in Turtle Island. There are, however, several poems in Myths & Texts especially where animal imagery is used. Myths and Texts is divided into three sections, called `Logging`,
`Hunting`, and `Burning`. The section titled ´Hunting` features frequent use of animal imagery and is therefore also examined in this thesis.
The main interest in Danger on Peaks, Snyder’s latest volume of poetry from 2004 is in that it shows his attitudes towards some relatively recent events, such as the destruction by the Taliban of the Buddha statues of Bamiyan valley, and the events of 9/11, but apart from that, the collection is not as relevant to the aims of this study as, for example, Turtle Island and Myths & Texts, which are the richest in animal imagery. The rest of his poetry, as well as some of his prose works which provide some excellent views on his works, will also be discussed briefly, but not to the extent as Turtle Island and Myths
& texts, the analysis of which will form the bulk of this thesis.
The method for this study is conducting a close reading of Gary Snyder’s poetry and the themes and motifs related to it. In studying Snyder’s poetry I will use Terry Gifford’s definitions of Pastoral poetics as outlined in his essay “Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, Post- Pastoral” (Gifford 2000a: 219-222), as his approach is very suitable in dealing with the material at hand. Gifford’s classification and its value to this study will be introduced later in chapter 2.3 (“Ecocritical Tendencies in Gary Snyder’s Poetry”) in this thesis.
Before embarking on the actual analysis of the poetry, an overview of some previous studies on Snyder’s work as well as the theoretical framework related to this thesis is due. The cultural context in which Snyder’s work can be placed in will also be discussed briefly, along with a presentation of the Buddhist principles that came to be of such great importance for Snyder’s work.
An interdisciplinary approach is needed to examine Snyder’s work. This is because of the roles Snyder played in both the influential Beat Generation movement and in the awakening of environmental consciousness in the United States. He was also a
prominent figure in the introducing and spreading of Zen Buddhism in the United States. Since Buddhist, and Zen Buddhist elements in particular, are so transparent in his poetry, some thought needs to be given to the influence that these elements had on his poems.
1.3 Previous Studies
I will next introduce some of the previous studies done on Snyder’s work in relation to the study at hand, as this will help place this thesis in the context of Snyder criticism.
The Buddhist and environmental aspects of Gary Snyder’s vision have received a certain amount of academic attention in the past, and a substantial portion of this research has been collected into a volume edited by Patrick D. Murphy, Critical Essays on Gary Snyder. Murphy considers Snyder to be an “important spokesperson for American Buddhism, international environmentalism, and bioregional politics” (1991:
1), and these various roles allotted to Snyder are discussed in the volume.
Although the initial essay in the volume by Thomas Parkinson in certain parts reads more like a fan letter than a proper ‘critical’ essay, Snyder’s poetics and ideas are also discussed in scholarly fashion by, for example, Thomas J. Lyon, who focuses on Snyder’s ecological vision, noting the “endless interrelatedness” of the roots in Snyder’s poetics; “new ecology, […] Romantic writing” and “Oriental thinking” (Lyon 1991:
35). Prominent literary critic Charles Altieri focuses on the lyric style in Snyder’s poetry, describing this style as creating a harmonious balance between the human and the non-human through the use of interpenetrating nature imagery (Altieri 1991: 50-51).
Altieri also recognizes the importance of dealing with the “philosophical perspective[s]”
(1991: 48) of Snyder’s poetry as a means of producing a cogent analysis.
Sherman Paul states in his essay “From Lookout to Ashram: The way of Gary Snyder”
that he does not know anyone “since Thoreau who has so thoroughly espoused the wild as Gary Snyder – and no one who is so much its poet” (1991: 58). Paul’s essay is similar to Parkinson’s in the way that the scholar’s admiration of his subject is so clear
that it in parts creates an obstacle in gaining an objective view on the poet and his works. This is a rather common feature in many studies on Snyder. Bert Almon, on the other hand, contributes to the collection with a very concise critique on the Buddhist aspects of Gary Snyder’s poetry. His work has proven to be of excellent value to this thesis, and his commentary appears in the analysis section of several poems here.
David Robbins is another Snyder enthusiast who considers Snyder’s work to be “a turning point in our culture” (1991: 90). Robbins has decided to focus almost exclusively on the poem “Burning Island” in Snyder’s Regarding Wave, and his research therefore is not as relevant to this study as some of the other contributors’
work. Robert Kern has produced an excellent study on Snyder’s poetics while managing to keep a very critical attitude towards the poetry. Turtle Island, especially, receives heavy criticism from Kern for its lack of finesse in the face of environmental politics expressed in the poems.
Michael Castro and Charles Molesworth have both investigated Turtle Island, both the poetics of it and the political connotations it carries, and the work of both of them is also used in this study. Jody Norton has chosen to focus on the influence that the Chinese T’ang poetry and the Japanese haiku had on Gary Snyder’s poetry, and her incisive observations are also used in this thesis. Julia Martin examines the use of metaphor in Snyder’s poetry, and her work also proved useful in the analysis section of this thesis.
The editor of the collection, Patrick D. Murphy, studies the importance of interpenetration in Snyder’s poetry. His work deals mainly with Myths & Texts, and as such is also useful to this thesis. Finally, Katsunori Yamazato has produced an insightful essay on the Zen Buddhist elements of Gary Snyder’s poetry in Turtle Island, and his knowledge on the subject is also used in the analysis section of Snyder’s poetry in this thesis.
While not an academic work per se, John Suiter’s Poets on the Peaks does detail the beginnings of Gary Snyder’s poetic career, coupled with anecdotes of Snyder’s
experiences and activities in the natural world, presenting how Snyder’s mountaineering interests and conservation work shaped his views and, together with the Buddhist practice that he was starting at the time, filtered through to his poetry as well. Moreover, James I. McClintock’s Nature’s Kindred Spirits is a useful reference in putting Snyder’s work in context with other American nature writers. McClintock, too, discusses the influences of Buddhism together with Native American traditions on Snyder’s work.
Furthermore, Jennie Skerl has edited a collection of essays on the religious, political and environmental aspects of Gary Snyder and other Beat Generation writers in her volume Reconstructing the Beats, in which the first three essays, by Robert Holton, Daniel Belgrad, and Clinton R. Starr, deal with this theme. This volume, however, does not explicitly deal with either Gary Snyder, Ecological issues or Buddhism, but with the more general aspects of Beat politics and counterculture, neglecting to take into account the profound influence that Buddhism had on Snyder’s writing. Robert Holton’s essay, for example, does recognize Snyder’s importance in bringing “to the fore alternative religious and environmental perspectives”, that have proved to be “vital” for the American culture (2004: 26), and while he, together with Belgrad and Starr, does discuss the countercultural aspects and influences of Eastern religions in general on Beat writers, they do not consider them specifically related to Buddhism.
Big Sky Mind: Buddhism and the Beat Generation, edited by Carole Tonkinson, also deals with the Beat Generation’s relationship to Buddhism, but hers is not a scholarly work, rather an anthology of Beat Generation writers influenced by Buddhism, and the impact Buddhism had on the political and ecological aspects of their work is not dealt with in depth. In order to be able to cogently analyze Snyder’s work and its Buddhist implications, it will obviously be necessary also to refer to the original sources that provided Snyder with the ideas that came to shape both his life and writings. These include works by famous Zen Masters like Dogen and D.T. Suzuki, as well as traditional sutras (Buddhist scriptures) collected in Dwight Goddard’s A Buddhist Bible (1938). Donald S. Lopez Jr.’s A Modern Buddhist Bible (2002) is also an important reference in that it, too, deals with Gary Snyder and his fellow Beat Generation writers.
In this volume, Lopez introduces Buddhist-inspired fragments from Beat Generation
writers together with diverse entries from other writers, as well as an essay by Snyder from Turtle Island.
An important contributor to this thesis is also Laurence Coupe’s The Green Studies Reader. This collection also includes an entry by Gary Snyder, ‘Language Goes Two Ways’. In this essay Snyder calls the world we live in “our postindustrial precollapse world” (2000a: 129). In addition to this, the volume includes many other, more optimistic views on environmental development. These studies contribute to the theoretical framework of this thesis. John Ruskin’s notion of the “pathetic fallacy”
(2000/1856: 27) is one obvious point of reference in interpreting Gary Snyder’s poetry, as so much of so called ‘nature poetry’ falls under Ruskin’s category of ‘falsely’
representing natural phenomena. Kate Soper, Donna Haraway, Terry Gifford and Patrick D. Murphy also address important issues in showing how nature has been constructed as feminine, or ‘the other’, in much of traditional literary theory and other scientific work. This question bears on this study, too, as Snyder’s work in some cases forms a continuum to this kind of thinking. Although nature is never seen in Snyder’s works as ‘the other’ per se, there is no doubt that to Snyder, nature definitely has certain feminine qualities, and this will also be discussed later on in this thesis.
2 BUDDHISM AND ECOCRITICISM IN GARY SNYDER’S POETRY
In this chapter I discuss the various elements that provide the tools for a critical analysis of Gary Snyder’s poetry. A basic understanding of certain Buddhist principles is required in order to grasp the cultural and literary context that Snyder’s work is placed in. After a brief foray in this ideological background, I will examine both Buddhism and ecocriticism in relation to Snyder’s poetry, as it is an essential facet in decoding the meanings and political implications in his poems.
2.1 Ideological Background to Gary Snyder’s Poetry
Some background information on Buddhism is important in order to better understand Snyder’s use of animal imagery in his poems, as Buddhist ideas are so transparent in much of his work. In May 1956 Snyder left San Francisco and the United States on a freighter heading for Kyoto, Japan. There he was to start his formal education in the practice of Zen Buddhism of the Rinzai school under Miura Isshu Roshi, and later under Oda Sesso Roshi [Roshi is a term of veneration, meaning ‘teacher’]. His voluntary exile would last for twelve years, during which time he would only twice visit the United States, or ‘Turtle Island’, as he preferred to call it based on his studies in Native American creation myths (Snyder 2000b: 194).
Snyder had been exposed to Buddhist influences since he was a young boy of only nine or ten, after for the first time seeing Chinese landscape paintings (Tonkinson 1995:
171). From then on his interest picked up momentum, and one culmination point came in the year 1951, when he was twenty-one years of age. That is when he for the first time encountered the writings of D.T. Suzuki, the most prominent Japanese Zen Master to come and teach in the West, and this “effect would turn out to be nothing less than life-changing” (Suiter 2002: 19). Snyder’s commitment to Buddhism solidified in the following few years prior to his leaving for Japan, and the experiences gathered in his Zen studies came to have a powerful influence on how animals and the rest of nature is presented in his poetry.
During and after his formal Zen training in Japan Gary Snyder’s vision solidified, and Buddhism, along with ecology, became the key components in his work. This is often most plainly expressed in his prose works, all of which were published after he had already received serious training and taken his vows as a lay member of the sangha (Buddhist community). Despite being immersed in the Zen practice, Snyder was nevertheless able to maintain a critical perspective on his practice, realizing that if everyone took the same path as he, it would result in chaos, as not everyone can go and spend their lives in monastic communities: “We can’t have twenty-five percent of the population going off and becoming monks at the expense of the rest […] [s]itting ten hours a day means that somebody else is growing your food for you” (2000b: 94).
Snyder’s solution to this dilemma was simple: “We damn well better learn that our meditation is primarily going to be our work with our hands” (2000b: 94).
In Japan he further developed his ideas of a “planetary culture” (2000b: 43), based on the Buddhist creed of compassion and equality of all sentient, as well as non-sentient beings, outlining his program in his essays on ecology and Buddhism. The only way to fully understand Snyder’s environmental and political views is by understanding the profound impact this idea of the equal value of all beings had on him, as to Snyder
“[e]cological compassion is not a matter of sentimental humanitarianism” (Almon 1991:
81), but rather the most vital question facing all beings on earth. To Snyder’s work, the unlimited scope of compassion in Buddhism was a key factor, and he considered the
“traditional harmlessness and avoidance of taking life in any form” as having “nation- shaking implications” (2000b: 42).
The program Gary Snyder has in mind is outlined explicitly in his essays, where he calls for societies with “matrilineal descent, free-form marriage, ‘natural credit’ economics, far less population, and much more wilderness” (2000b: 43). He also states that continual economical growth is not healthy, but rather a “cancer”, and the action he explicitly calls for is protection of all “scarce predators and varmints: ‘[s]upport your right to arm bears” (2005/1974: 98), and also outlines measures needed to be taken to achieve an “ecologically and culturally enlightened state of affairs” (2000b: 251). To
Snyder, this “interpenetration of primitive and civilized states of mind” is what is needed to return mankind to the “original mind” of Buddhism (Castro 1991: 138).
2.2 Buddhist Tendencies in Gary Snyder’s Poetry
D.T. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism had a profound impact on Snyder (Aitken 1994:
vii). Suzuki’s essays deal with many of the same themes that Snyder would later develop in his own poetry. Besides containing historical research into Zen Buddhism, the book also contains instructions and guidance for aspiring practitioners, and these guidelines are largely adhered to even in modern Zen practice in Japan.
One of the overriding themes in Suzuki’s essays is the notion of mutual dependencies, or interpenetrations, between all phenomena in the world. This is very similar to the way that relationships between all natural elements are seen in Deep Ecology. In Zen Buddhism (and in other branches of Buddhism, as well), every being, whether sentient or non-sentient, is considered to possess a ‘Buddha nature’, “if not in actuality, then potentially” (Suzuki 2000/1949: 64). Suzuki examines this question quite thoroughly, stating first that all things are essentially empty (sunya), have not been created (anutpada), are “nondualistic” (advaya) and lack “individualistic characters”
(nihsvabhavalakshana). If these presumptions are accepted (many people would naturally deny these conjectures), the “logical consequence” would be that there is ultimately nothing to “separate one object from another” (2000/1949: 91). This ties in with the notions of interpenetration and equality between all beings that are so apparent in much of Gary Snyder’s poetry. Many poems in Turtle Island, for example, explore alternative modes of living and of organizing society, much like Suzuki denouncing
“national aggrandizement” (2000/1949: 321) and gathering of wealth.
Of all Snyder’s poetry collections, Turtle Island contains the most direct social criticism, and this criticism takes on sometimes harsh and even violent overtones. The apparent anger in many of the poems in Turtle Island is very much directed at political decision makers. A case in point is the rather violent imagery in “Mother Earth: Her
Whales”, which will be discussed in the analysis section. The use of anger to achieve positive repercussions is an explicit feature in Tibetan Buddhism (this also is discussed in the analysis section of this thesis), but is also a feature in Zen Buddhism with its links to bushido, the martial arts, and Shaku Soen notes that “Buddhists do not shun struggle and warfare” if there is a cause “worth contending for or defending” (2002: 42).
This readiness to engage oneself in struggle in part also explains the revolutionary tones in many of Snyder’s poems. Snyder is known to have certain sympathies towards anarchic movements, as he sees many same qualities in the running of societies independent from state control with some of the Buddhist principles of non-interference and disregard for materialistic values (Snyder 2001: 289–290).
The importance of Hui-neng’s (Hui-neng is known as the sixth ‘patriarch’ of Zen Buddhism) “Platform sutra” to Snyder was also eminent (Suiter 2002: 22). Hui-neng also emphasizes the interdependencies of natural phenomena and vows “to bring them all unto deliverance” (Mou-lam 1994/1938: 509). Similar vows, usually sung out loud, are still in use on a daily basis in Japanese Zen practice, both during meditation and eating. The sacramental nature of eating and the proper use of dead animals are discussed in depth in the poetry analysis section of this thesis, as it is a recurring theme in Snyder’s poetry.
Another Japanese Zen Master that had a profound impact on Snyder was Dogen, the founder of the Soto-shu branch of Zen. Snyder later adapted the title of Dogen’s famous “Mountains and Waters sutra” in his own poetry collection Mountains and Rivers Without End, a highly complex work of religious and environmental issues, the writing of which lasted for fifty years. Dogen’s “Mountains and Waters sutra”
(sansuikyo) deals with the theme of interpenetration, the “mountains” representing existence and the “waters” emptiness. Thomas Cleary notes that it is an interesting facet of Zen writing that things are used simultaneously “as a metaphor and at face value in the same text” (in Dogen 1986/13th Century: 87), much like in Snyder’s poetry where concrete animal representations also stand as metaphors for political ideologies, such as
“the insects” that “side with the Viet Cong” (2005/1974: 22) in “The Call of the Wild”.
In the “Mountains and Waters sutra” the mountains are attributed with qualities that are usually considered human, and the interpenetrations of the human realm with the non- sentient realm are described as mountains actually walking: “don’t doubt the walking of mountains just because it doesn’t look the same as the walking of human beings”
(Dogen 1986: 89). Snyder equates the mountains with human beings in The Practice of the Wild: “mountains walk out to put another coin in the parking meter, and go on down to the 7-Eleven” (2004/1990: 111). Japanese Buddhism, especially, has always had deep associations with mountains (Bernbaum 1997: 56-71), as the waters flowing down the mountainsides have been important in irrigation systems. Even today, one may find Buddhist shrines erected on the peaks of the highest and most remote mountains of the Northern Japanese (Kita) Alps, and there are whole temple systems built on mountains, such as on top of Hiei-zan, the broad mountain plateau just outside Kyoto.
2.3 Ecocritical Tendencies in Gary Snyder’s Poetry
Ecocriticism is a facet of environmental literary criticism. Beyond this simplistic definition, there is very much divergent thought on what exactly it is and is not in addition to this, and very little consensus on the subject. There is also “no single, dominant worldview guiding ecocritical practice” (Slovic 2000: 160), and therefore, the theory and practice of ecocriticism are constantly re-defined. To attempt to define what it is not, the one thing that somewhat separates ecocriticism from deep ecology, for example, is its preoccupation with literature, whereas deep ecology is most often seen as a branch of philosophy, and more intimately concerned with ethics than literature.
Ecocriticism, and environmental studies in general, are often also seen as “soft” science and “hug-the-tree-stuff” (Slovic 2000: 161), partly because they do not yet have the venerability of older branches of literary criticism. However, it is very much a branch of literary criticism that is on the rise, and William Howarth even argues that ecocriticism is evolving beyond the more traditional branches of literary criticism by embracing fresh scientific trends such as quantum mechanics and chaos theory (2000: 164).
Ecocriticism can be practiced both by applying almost any form of literary criticism on a text concerned with environmental issues, and it can be practiced by approaching any text from an ecological viewpoint. Thus, the scope of ecocriticism is very broad, and its objects of study can be practically any texts where nature connects with culture.
Ecocriticism also belies the notion that to represent nature, texts need to be explicitly naturalistic. Instead, the natural interdependencies of human and non-human are brought to the fore through the creative use of language (Coupe 2000: 158). One aspect of ecocriticism is also its study of both the meaning of various signs and, even more importantly, the value ascribed to these signs where they are concerned with natural phenomena.
Being in many regards closely related to ecocriticism, deep ecology is also very deeply concerned with the value of things, and with the value of “the entire community”, or, the whole ecosystem. Hence, deep ecology is often referred to as being ecocentric, and so in clear opposition to anthropocentrism. Deep ecology is also different from some of the other environmental factions in that it always emphasizes that non-sentient phenomena are also to be considered when ethics are concerned. This is in clear contrast to, for example, different animal rights groups. Christopher Manes argues that deep ecology’s main task is to find “the voice to articulate the language appropriate for a time of environmental crisis”, (Manes 1990: 144-149) and this is obviously where deep ecology and Gary Snyder’s poetry coincide.
Gary Snyder’s poetry is often associated with both Romanticism and Postmodernism.
The same applies in many ways to ecocriticism, too, which is associated with “a typically postmodernist deprivileging of the human subject” (Head 2000: 235) while often at the same time harboring Romantic notions of nature. Snyder’s poetry is deeply ecocritical, especially in the political attitudes as expressed in the poems. Snyder’s poetry clearly expresses the fundamental ecocritical principles of “celebrating nature, berating its despoilers, and reversing their harm through political action” (Howarth 2000:163), the political action in Snyder’s case being his work as a poet and essay writer. Of course, he has also participated in conservation projects and local politics in his native California.
The ecological implications of Snyder’s work form a continuum to Transcendentalist philosophers like Thoreau and Emerson, and the attitudes towards conservation are indebted to the work of the likes of John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club. Muir’s work had already in the nineteenth century dealt with themes that the Deep ecology movement would in the twentieth century identify with, such as an anti-anthropocentric approach to nature, seeing all natural phenomena as depending on each other for their existence (Muir 2001/1954: 313, 316) instead of being “made especially for man”.
Although poetry may be seen as being “artifactual” and in opposition to “what is not made, nature” (Adorno 2000: 81), Snyder’s poetry with its very concrete natural descriptions actually produces an antithesis to this artifactuality. Thoreau has famously remarked that “in Wildness is the preservation of the World” (1999/1854: 23), and Snyder’s celebration of the wild may be seen as an attempt to preserve this very wildness. The medium for the celebration of the wild in Snyder’s case is obviously language, both poetic language in his poetry collections and matter-of-fact environmental analysis in his numerous essay collections. To Snyder, languages are
“naturally evolved wild systems” (Snyder 2000a: 127), and to accurately represent the wild, one’s language must follow the same discourse.
Terry Gifford has examined the implications of the “Wild” and its associations with Snyder’s poetry, concluding that the wild is represented as “wild ecosystems-richly interconnected, interdependent”. Snyder’s poems thus serve as instructions on “how to live on the earth now” (Gifford 2000b: 176). The measures needed to be taken in order to live harmoniously with one’s natural surroundings, becoming “natives of Turtle Island” (Snyder 2005/1974: 105), is an important element in Snyder’s poetry (Yamazato 1991: 230). Snyder’s ideas and poetic practices in this regard are closely connected with those of Martin Heidegger’s, who saw that “[p]oetry is what first brings man onto the earth, making him belong to it”, this idea of “dwelling” (2000/1951: 91) being paramount to Heidegger’s ecological thinking (Coupe 2000: 64). This notion of the interpenetration/interdependency of natural phenomena in Snyder’s poetry is one of the main concerns of this thesis. Apart from the Buddhist notions of this idea, ecological
thinking is also dependent on the various interpenetrations and interdependencies of the natural world. Ecology, and deep ecology especially, looks for “the hidden interdependencies” (Kerridge 2000: 242) in the world, the revealing of which is one of the most striking elements also in Gary Snyder’s poetry.
John Elder calls Snyder’s notions of interdependence “bacteriological”, stating that it is in his expressions of “life’s nutrient cycle” that his poetry expresses the harmony between Buddhism and ecology (Elder 2000: 231). The word “bacteriological” here refers to the idea of nature’s constant renewal through “decay” in a “positive sense”
(Elder 2000: 231). Laurence Coupe has also noted the similarities between Snyder’s
“practice of the wild” and Claude Lévi-Strauss’s ideas on the importance of an
“aesthetic response to plants and animals” (Coupe 2000: 121). Lévi-Strauss, like Snyder, underlines the importance of the myth, and denounces the Hegelian dichotomies and Cartesian dualism (Lévi-Strauss 2000: 132-134) that Snyder in his poetry also opposes by demonstrating the inherent non-dualism of the world. Snyder refers in many of his poems to the concept of the ‘Mother Earth’, as well as to that of
‘Gaia’. These concepts are used both by ecofeminists and deep ecologists (Garrard, 2004: 172), and it is therefore not surprising that Snyder, the “poet laureate” (Garrard, 2004: 20) of deep ecology also refers to them in order to resist the dominant culture of male superiority where nature is subjected to culture and female to male.
Although American literature contains an abundance of animal narratives, this phenomenon itself “precludes the emergence of specific animal poets” (Suarez-Toste 2004: 112). Despite the profusion of animal imagery in Gary Snyder’s poetry, he is not usually seen exclusively as an ‘animal poet’. More appropriately, Snyder’s work may be placed in the Pastoral tradition, the “traditional mode” (Bate 2000: 170) where relationships with nature are explored. Snyder’s politics are apparent in many of his poems, especially in those in Turtle Island and are, like Greg Garrard suggests, concerned with politics that do not only deal with “social relations between humans”
(Garrard 2000: 183), but with the relations of all sentient and non-sentient beings.
Terry Gifford has divided the Pastoral tradition into three phases: “Pastoral”, “Anti- Pastoral”, and “Post-Pastoral” (2000a 219-222). Snyder’s poetry fits quite neatly in the last category of “Post-Pastoral”, being neither in the tradition of the classic Pastoral of ancient Greco-Roman cultures nor representing anti-Pastoral sentiments. According to Gifford, post-Pastoral can be divided into six “fundamentals” (2000a: 221):
[1] an awe in attention to the natural world; [2] the recognition of a creative- destructive universe equally in balance in a continuous momentum of birth and death, death and rebirth, growth and decay, ecstasy and dissolution; [3]
the recognition that the inner is also the workings of the outer, that our inner nature can be understood in relation to external nature; [4] an awareness of both nature as culture and culture as nature; [5] the recognition that with consciousness comes conscience; [6] the ecofeminists’ realisation that the exploitation of the planet is of the same mind-set as the exploitation of women and minorities…
All of the above mentioned elements are present in Snyder’s poetry. The first and fourth
“fundamentals” are the most obvious elements in his work, as his poems clearly express both an awe of nature and an awareness of the interconnectedness of nature and culture.
However, instead of trying to force this categorization on my own analysis, I have decided to divide the poems dealt with in the analysis section of this study into these three categories: [1] poems depicting processes of interpenetration, [2] poems that elevate specific animals to the status of totem animals, and [3] poems that deal with the destruction of the natural habitats of animals and the effects of nature’s exploitation on them. These categorizations will be further discussed in the next chapter.
3 ANIMAL IMAGERY IN GARY SNYDER’S POETRY
Gary Snyder has famously remarked that “[a]s a poet I hold the most archaic values on earth” (2000/1960: viii). This archaism is reflected in the depictions of the wild in his poems. In referring to archaic practices in his poetry, Snyder has a distinct political agenda of ‘re-remembering’ the ancient ways in hope that they might be adopted in the modern world also. Leavis and Thompson have made a similar appeal in the essay “The Organic Community”: “[i]f we forget the old order we shall not know what kind of thing to strive towards” (2000: 76). Snyder’s poetry clearly sets out to show the thing strived towards, i.e. a more harmonious coexistence between the human realm and the natural realm of animals and wilderness.
Snyder’s poetry distinctly expresses the development of his ideas, his early poems collected in Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems being renditions of his days as a trail crew worker and fire lookout. These poems do not yet explicitly show Buddhist influences, but later on, as he has started his formal Zen training, Buddhist imagery becomes one of the most apparent features in his poetry. To Snyder, this was only natural, as he sees that “[p]oetry must sing or speak from authentic experience” (2000b:
53). Snyder’s poetry has also been criticized for its didacticism, and Thomas Parkinson has argued that he does not care about poetry as art, that poetry is for him only “a set of instruments in a spiritual quest” (1991: 33), and Snyder’s will to ‘preach’ sometimes gets the better of him. To this also, Snyder freely admits to in a letter to Philip Whalen:
“poetry is a PROCESS & shd [sic] be, in a Buddhist sort of way, didactic & sensual.”
(2000b: 150).
The typical imagery that Snyder used prior to his Japanese sojourn included animals (bear, coyote, deer, etc.), natural landscapes and erotic overtones. All these remained in his later poetry, as well, with the addition of Buddhist imagery, the theme of the interpenetration of all phenomena being paramount. This interpenetration is among the core teachings of any Buddhist sect, and also informed Snyder in his poetry. After finishing his Zen studies in Japan and returning to the United States in 1968, Gary Snyder began work on his collection, Turtle Island (Regarding Wave was published in
between, in 1970). Snyder’s environmentalism had become more militant since his return to his home country, and this new, more militant and angry voice was expressed in his poetry, in Turtle Island, in particular.
In this analysis I have chosen to categorize Snyder’s poems into three categories: [1]
poems depicting processes of interpenetration, [2] poems that elevate specific animals to the status of totem animals, and [3] poems that deal with the destruction of the natural habitats of animals and the effects of nature’s exploitation on them. These categories are subtitled as ‘Poems of Interpenetration’, ‘Poems of Totem Animals’, and
‘Poems of the Destruction of the Animals’ Natural Habitat’, respectively. This categorization is arguably idiosyncratic, and the poems could doubtless be organized in another manner, especially since there is significant overlapping between the themes in the various poems, but this categorization does allow a cogent analysis concentrating on one specific theme at a time, and is therefore the most valid for this study. Snyder’s political stance is expressed in very clear fashion in the poem “For All”, where he takes a piece of American patriotic text and alters it to better express the importance of seeing the whole ecosystem as one:
[…] I pledge allegiance I pledge allegiance to the soil of Turtle Island,
and to the beings who thereon dwell one ecosystem
in diversity under the sun
With joyful interpenetration for all.
(2000b: 504)
The “beings” in this particular poem represent both animals and humans, and it is noteworthy that Snyder here refers to them not as separate beings of different value, but more as indivisible, or even indistinguishable representatives of sentient beings. Such playful yet serious imagery is present throughout his works, and its motivation often is precisely to show the intrinsic sameness of both humans and the other animals. I will
next start my analysis of his poems, first starting with the poems that express interpenetration.
3.1 Poems of Interpenetration
The interpenetration of the human and the animal realms is a recurrent theme in Turtle Island. In the poem “Charms” (2005/1974: 28), for example, Snyder uses poetic imagery in depicting the narrator of the poem as an animal and thus enabling him to see the “mare or lioness” through the eyes of an animal: “Thus I could be devastated and athirst with longing/for a lovely mare or lioness, or lady mouse,/in seeing the beauty from THERE/shining through her, some toss of whiskers/or grace-full wave of the tail”.
Snyder’s reading of an important Buddhist treatise, ‘The Diamond Sutra’, also echoed his own intuitive reverence for nature, as according to the sutra, the teaching of the Buddha would bring deliverance to everyone,
whether hatched from an egg, or formed in a womb, or evolved from spawn, or produced by metamorphosis, with or without form, possessing mental faculties or devoid of mental faculties, or both devoid and not devoid, or neither devoid or not devoid, and lead them toward perfect Nirvana
(Wai-tao 1994/1938: 88).
This Buddhist idea of the equality and interpenetration of all natural beings and phenomena occurs frequently in Gary Snyder’s poetry. A similar doctrine of interpenetration and equality was also expressed in the Transcendentalists’ writings, as Emerson already had noted in ‘Nature’ that “Each creature is only a modification of the other; the likeness in them is more than the difference, and their radical law is one and the same.” (Emerson 2003/1836: 21).
3.1.1 Interpenetrations of Humans, Animals, and the Earth
“The Way West, Underground” (Snyder 2005/1974: 4-5) is the second poem in Turtle Island. According to Charles Molesworth, the poem is best read as a “salutation” (1991:
150), much in the same way as many of the other poems in Turtle Island can be seen as saluting the animals inhabiting the continent North America/’Turtle Island’. Besides the bison, only mentioned at the end of the poem, this poem deals mainly with the bear myth. Snyder has traced this myth back to its origins among the Neanderthal people seventy thousand years ago (Snyder 2000b: 243), and the bear is a standard metaphor in much of Snyder’s poetry.
The theme of interpenetration is, however, even more pervasive in this particular poem than the bear’s importance as totem animal, hence its place here under ‘Poems of Interpenetration’. In its essence, this long poem is a presentation of the worldwide bear myth. It shows the bear’s importance, mainly to the indigenous peoples of the world, from the west coast of United States, through Asia to Europe and back to the United States:
The split-cedar Smoked salmon
Cloudy days of Oregon, the thick fir forests.
After setting the scene in the first stanza, Snyder introduces the bear in the second stanza. As is usual with Snyder, “Bear” is usually spelled with a capital “B”. Snyder makes use of typographical space in the introduction of the bear, inserting a blank space between “heads” and “uphill”, thus slowing down the pace of the poem. This is a standard poetic device in many of Snyder’s poems, as is the use of hyphens for the same purpose (Norton 1991: 172-174). The hyphen is here used to prepare the reader for another image, the “Bear Wife” moving “up the coast”, both in the sense of heading
“uphill”, but also in the sense of moving further north after fresh food, in this case blackberries. The section “where blackberry brambles/ramble in the burns” is an oddly
discordant one. The play on “sound symbolism” (as defined by Mick Short 1997: 114- 115) and alliteration is obvious, but adds little poetic value to this section, merely illustrating the often playful tone Snyder incorporates in many of his poems:
Black Bear heads uphill in Plumas county,
Round bottom scuttling through willows–
The Bear Wife moves up the coast.
where blackberry brambles ramble in the burns.
In the next section of the poem, Snyder continues handling the bear myth, this time alluding to the religious importance of the bear to the indigenous people of Hokkaido, Japan, also referring to the practice of shamanism by the Ainu people.
And around the curve of islands foggy volcanoes
on, to North Japan. The bears
& fish-spears of the Ainu.
Gilyak.
Mushroom-vision healer, single flat drum,
from long before China.
Women with drums who fly over Tibet.
After leaving Asia, the bear is depicted heading westwards, to Europe. Here the bear makes a stop in Finland where the bear was an important and respected figure of the forest. Also of note is the activity that the bear performs throughout her way, “eating berries” (see also ‘A Berry Feast’ in chapter 3.2.1), much as the “women with drums”
of the previous section, who are following the bear, and seen in this poem as merging together with the bear.
In this poem the shamanistic rituals and the bear are interpenetrating, both the myth and the shamanism making a full circle around the globe. Snyder also identifies the Finnish sauna with the sweat lodge of the Native Americans of the Klamath area (around the
Siskiyou mountains on the West Coast of California, very close to Snyder’s place of residence in the Yuba country of Northern California). The “Finns” mentioned in the poem are clearly from Lapland, and the traditional outfit described theirs, and Snyder equates the celebratory activities of “the Finns” with those of the Ainu.
Following forests west, and rolling, following grassland, tracking bears and mushrooms, eating berries all the way.
In Finland finally took a bath:
like redwood sweatlodge on the Klamath–
all the Finns in moccasins and pointy hats with dots of white, netting, trapping, bathing, singing holding hands, the while see-sawing on a bench, a look of love–
In the following section, Snyder begins with a comparison of various names for ‘bear’
in European languages, noting the difference of the Finnish “Karhu” with Indo- European language versions. This is followed by another change in mood, the cursory remark “lightning rainbow great cloud tree/dialogs of birds” working as yet another geographical transition in the poem.
Karhu–Bjorn–Braun–Bear
[lightning rainbow great cloud tree dialogs of birds]
Europa. ‘The West.’
the bears are gone
except Brunhilde?
or elder wilder goddesses reborn–will race the streets of France and Spain
with automatic guns–
in Spain,
The final stanza of the poem completes the circle by making a return to North America, or Turtle Island. This return is not implied by any linguistic devices, as the comma at
the end of the last stanza would indicate a further continuation of the “Europa” theme.
Snyder here associates Brunhilde, the strong mythological female figure with the bear, much the same he as he does Odysseus in ‘this poem is for bear’ (3.2.1). The bear here gets updated to the modern era as an automatic-gun-toting figure, a “wilder”
reincarnation of old goddesses, but still a warrior like Brunhilde.
Also, Spain and France are here brought together with native American cave artists, the
“Red Hands” painting “Bears and Bison”. Snyder is here alluding to the ancient existence of the bear myth being preserved in underground caves in Europe, artists through their paintings being responsible for the survival of the myth. Although on the surface, the poem deals with the bear, it is also an excellent example in showing Snyder’s vision of the interrelations of ancient myth and the ‘primitive’ peoples.
Bears and Bison,
Red Hands with missing fingers, Red mushroom labyrinths;
Lightning-bolt mazes, Painted in caves, Underground.
In “Coyote Valley Spring” (2005/1974: 15), the deer, together with the bear and squirrel, is depicted as a “shifting thing” alongside airborne “birds, [and] weeds”. The poem draws a parallel with the animals and the earth itself, the nature of the earth also being depicted as a “shifting thing” constantly on the move:
Cubs
tumble in the damp leaves Deer, bear, squirrel.
fresh winds scour the spring stars.
rocks crumble deep mud hardens under heavy hills.
shifting things
birds, weeds, slip through the air through eyes and ears, Coyote valley […]
The poem attempts at a synthesis between the sentient and non-sentient realms, where the concrete movement of both realms is seen as an essential principle in the formation of an ecosystem. Therefore this poem clearly is one that belongs to the category where the principles of interpenetration are expressed through the use of animal characters.
In “Prayer for the Great Family” (2005/1974: 24-25), Snyder once again uses the
“Mother Earth” metaphor, and the poem can be read as a “creation hymn” (Molesworth 1991: 150) of a kind. The “Great Family” of the poem’s title refers to all life on the planet, although, contrary to anthropocentricism, humans are actually excluded from the
“Great Family”. However, the poem is a prayer made by man, and man is the underlying protagonist, as is apparent in the repetitious “in our minds so be it” at the end of each stanza.
Although stanzas three, four, and six are the only ones where animals are explicitly mentioned, the printing of the whole poem is in place, as it shows the interpenetrations apparent in Snyder’s animal imagery in the rest of his works, too:
Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day––
and to her soil: rich, rare, and sweet in our minds so be it
Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf and fine root-hairs; standing still through wind and rain; their dance is in the flowing spiral grain in our minds so be it
Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent Owl at dawn. Breath of our song
clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it
Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers, teaching secrets,
freedoms, and ways; who share with us their milk;
self-complete, brave, and aware in our minds so be it
Gratitude to Water: clouds, lakes, rivers, glaciers;
holding or releasing; streaming through all our bodies salty seas
in our minds so be it
Gratitude to the Sun: blinding pulsing light through trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where bears and snakes sleep–he who wakes us–
in our minds so be it Gratitude to the Great Sky
who holds billions of stars–and goes yet beyond that–
beyond all powers, and thoughts and yet is within us–
Grandfather Space.
The Mind is his Wife.
so be it.
The poem is modeled “after a Mohawk prayer” (Snyder 2005/1974: 25), and is a synthesis of sentient and non-sentient beings where the whole biosphere is seen as forming a living whole. There is personification of nature in the poem, such as in referring to the Sun as a “he”, and also in the last stanza where the “Great Sky” is referred to as a person “who holds billions of stars”, and the space is referred to as a
“Grandfather” whose wife is “The Mind”. However, the most striking example of interrelatedness, literally, is stanza number four where animals, or “Wild Beings” are referred to as “our brothers”. It is also implied that proper ways in relating to nature can be learned from these “Wild Beings”. The awareness that the poem attributes to animals is also something that is strongly reminiscent of the Buddhist doctrines that state that animals are capable of awareness, too. In this poem Snyder fuses this Buddhist idea with the belief systems of the Native Americans.
“Magpie’s Song” (Snyder 2005/1974: 69) is in many ways one of the more elegant poems in Turtle Island. The poem introduces an interpenetrating image of a human, semi-urban realm, and the animal realm, represented here by the coyotes and the
magpie. The Magpie can be seen as the poet’s attempt to bring into human language
“the voice that can capture this interpenetration” (Castro 1991: 138), an attempt that, despite the anthropocentric connotations, the poem realizes quite well. The first stanza of the poem is essentially a simplistic, haiku-like depiction of a nameless human observer sitting down “on excavation gravel” and hearing the coyotes’ “howling and yapping”:
Six A.M.,
Sat down on excavation gravel by juniper and desert S.P. tracks interstate 80 not far off
between trucks Coyotes–maybe three
howling and yapping from a rise.
The second stanza presents the magpie, ironically, as a lyrical singer, reassuring the human receiver of his song, that there is “[n]o need to fear”, implying that the true nature of the world can be found in the “Turquoise blue” of “the Mind”. Here again, the notion of the interrelation of the human and the non-human is set forth in the Magpie’s referring to the hearer as “brother”. The stanza also has a certain quality of an epiphany, as the receiver of the song feels connected to the Magpie on a magical way, the song transmuting into coherent human language:
Magpie on a bough Tipped his head and said, “Here in the mind, brother Turquoise blue.
I wouldn’t fool you.
Smell the breeze
It came through all the trees No need to fear
What’s ahead
Snow up the hills west Will be there every year be at rest.
A feather on the ground–
The wind sound–
Here in the Mind, Brother, Turquoise Blue’
The poem does carry with it certain anthropocentric qualities; as the receiver of the Magpie’s song is obviously interpreting the song according to his (he is referred to as
“brother”) own conceptions of what a Magpie might indicate with her song. However, the poem is best seen as presenting the reader with the magical mantra of the Magpie that is part of “the jeweled net of interconnected systems” (Molesworth 1991: 153), echoing the Buddhist notion of animals as sentient beings capable of the fullest self- realization.
A noteworthy addition to Snyder’s cast of animal characters that he adopted during his time in Japan is the inclusion of sharks and whales in his poetry. The whale will be discussed separately later. These creatures of the Pacific also reflect his notion of interdependence, which is evident in ‘Shark Meat’, from Regarding Wave:
[…] Miles of water, Black current, Thousands of days
Re-crossing his own paths To tangle our net
To be part of This loom.
(2000b: 454).
Here the shark is seen crisscrossing his own “paths” only to eventually end up “tangled”
with the human realm, represented here in the form of fishing nets. In addition to interpenetration, this poem is also connected with animals used as food, and with
‘hunting magic’, which will be discussed next. According to Snyder, the understanding of these “interdependencies” is vital in order to gain a full awareness of the planet’s biosphere (2000c/1980: 34-35). The same connection between interpenetration and eating is also apparent in the poem “Night Herons” (2005/1974: 36) where interpenetration is viewed as a source of joy: “the joy of all the beings/is in being/older and tougher and eaten/up.” This is a recurrent theme in Snyder’s poetry.
3.1.2 Hunting Magic, or Animals as People
Much the same way as Snyder has traced the bear myth around the world, has he done with the concept of ‘hunting magic’. The essay “Poetry and the Primitive” (2000b: 52- 61) explains Snyder’s view on the subject. By ‘hunting magic’ he means the straining of one’s consciousness and cognitive faculties to identify with one’s pray to the extent that it “out of compassion comes within your range” (Snyder 2000b: 54). This kind of view where the hunter is so intertwined with the pray he sees as a global phenomenon amongst the ancient peoples of Europe, North America, Japan and China. Evidence of such exists in Europe since the Paleolithic era until the start of what we term
‘civilization’. In North America, the concept was more alive amidst the Native Americans until a much later date due to its colonization happening at a comparatively speaking late date. The mythology of ‘hunting magic’ also encompasses the idea of rebirth where the animals and humans are amidst a constant circle of “mating and giving birth” (Snyder 2000b: 55) and then accepting death in the hands of the hunter and thus contributing to the sustenance of other life.
In “The Dead by the Side of the Road” from Turtle Island (2005/1974: 7-8), Snyder examines the consequences of building highways among the trails used by animals. The poem lists several different animals that have been killed by people using the road: the hawk, skunk, deer, and ringtail cat. Animals are presented as objects of compassion in this poem. “Interstate 5”, mentioned in the poem, runs through California along the Sacramento and San Juan Valleys, very close to Gary Snyder’s homestead,
‘Kitkitdizze’. Besides mentioning the animals, the poem also lists different ways in which the animals’ deaths can be put to use by, for example, making “a pouch for magic tools”. It begins with a question:
How did a great Red-tailed Hawk come to lie–all stiff and dry–
on the shoulder of
Interstate 5?
Her wings for dance fans
“Dance fans” here has a double meaning. First, it creates a strong contrast with the wild and the urban consumer culture where a dead hawk’s wings are accessorized into fashion items. However, a deeper look into this also reveals the connection to ‘hunting magic’ and the Native American Ghost Dance movement, as the dancers wore birds’
feathers as ornaments already then. Snyder quotes an Arapaho dancer’s song: “I circle around/The boundaries of the earth,/The boundaries of the earth,/Wearing the long wing feathers as I fly/ Wearing the long wing feathers as I fly”. The next stanza continues with a description of the concrete actions following, but there is no elaboration on who
“Zac” is. Several other animals’ fates adjacent to the road, described as almost murderous entity, are presented next:
Zac skinned a skunk with a crushed head Washed the pelt in gas; it hangs,
tanned, in his tent Fawn stew on Hallowe’en
hit by a truck on highway forty-nine offer cornmeal by the mouth;
skin it out.
Log trucks run on fossil fuel
I never saw a Ringtail til I found one in the road:
case-skinned it with the toenails
footpads, nose, and whiskers on;
it soaks in salt and water sulphuric acid pickle;
she will be a pouch for magic tools.
The Doe was apparently shot lengthwise and through the side–
shoulder and out the flank belly full of blood
In the final stanza, the poem demonstrates the proper behavior in conjunction with these dead animals. This proper behavior entails “Pray[ing] to the spirits”, and asking the deer and other animals “to bless us”. Snyder has repeatedly referred to this kind of practice also in other places in his works. In addition to “Poetry and the Primitive”, the essay
“Suwa-no-se Island and the Banyan Ashram” (2000b: 62-68) deals with the same concept where animals are seen as our relatives, as the “ancient sisters” referred to in this poem. This interpenetration of the human with the non-human realm, becoming
“one with the other” (2000b: 65) is essential for the primitive hunter in Snyder’s view.
The poem ends in a pessimistic tone, and again ‘guilty’ parties (such as in ‘Call of the Wild’, to be discussed later on) are mentioned such as in the prosaic remark that “Log trucks run on fossil fuel”). The appreciative behavior towards the animals is, however, also an important element in the poem:
Can save the other shoulder maybe, if she didn’t lie too long–
Pray to the spirits. Ask them to bless us:
our ancient sisters’ trails
the roads were laid across and kill them:
night-shining eyes
The dead by the side of the road.
The “hunting magic”, or, identification with the non-human, is also referred to in other poems by Snyder, such as in poem number eight in the “Hunting” section of Myths and Texts, where the primitive (mythic) hunter’s methods are explained:
Deer don’t want to die for me.
I’ll drink sea-water
Sleep on beach pebbles in the rain Until the deer come down to die in pity for my pain.
(2000c/1960: 28)
The poem, however, begins with the magical song of the Deer herself getting ready for the hunting season:
“I dance on all the mountains
On five mountains, I have a dancing place When they shoot at me I run
To my five mountains”
(2000c/1960: 26)
